Core Exiles

Description

Core exiles is possibly the largest, most well put together and most addictive accessible space themed game on the internet. In the far future, most of humanity has settled in a central galactic region known as the core where life is calm, safe and strictly regulated. As in any society though, there are those who do not toe the line, those who fall fowl of the law, and those who find the restriction of an ever watchful government too much to handle. These disidents are exiled from Core society to the Sphere, a lawless galaxy where old military organizations watchfully hang on to their teretory and pirates prey on the unwary.

You are of course, one of these exiles, and begin in the sphere galaxy with nothing but a rusty old ship, a sarcastic ai computer, and the hope to make a name for yourself as a space captain. What you do there is very much your decision, sinse Core exiles features a huge range of activities to earn experience and creddits.

You might try your hand hauling passengers or cargo around the six galaxies, ---- being careful to dodge pirates and hostile aliens along the way of course. You might also try a litle retribution yourself and carry out some missions for one of the military powers in the sector, ---- or even become a pirate and prey on merchants and traders. Before continuing though, it's worth noting that all of these targets are entirely npc controled. Core exiles is possibly the only game on the net that actually attempts to foster a spirit of cooperation among it's players, so don't worry about an ultra powerful player blasting your ship to bits, ---- there are plenty of ultra powerful pirates who will gladly do that for you anyway.

The cooperation aspect also comes into play in another major facet of Core exiles, ---- crafting and trading. With the right skills, a schematic or two and a handful of resources, you can build just about anything up to and including ships and even your own planetary settlements and starbases! In fact many items in game can only! be built by players. All these items however cannot be built out of nothing, and thus serious amounts of cash can be made selling commodities, space debris or other in game items to players, indeed many tools such as the galactic buyers markit exist to make this process easier.

As well as loot from combat you can also gain resources by directly mining them from asteroids, ---- assuming you can locate them first of course, or buy salvaging wrecks, refining ore, owning your own factories, resource extractors or even mechanical mining drones!

To make some extra capital you might try becoming a business leader, and open up your own Mals on various planets and starbases for npcs to buy your hard earned loot, and if you really want to enter in to the spirit of financial enterprise perhaps try dabbling in the galactic stock markit.

If your of a strategic mind, you might also wish to try owning your own settlement. Wrent out space to npc stores to sell to other players, higher staff, ---- but make certain that you've got enough defenses in place because those pirates aren't going to leave you alone. On the plus side however, your Settlement can play a major part in the game, since with settlements comes the ability to build your own ship yard and sell spacecraft to other captains, spacecraft which (unlike other ships in the game), can allow players to command their own crew members.

A recent addition to the game allows you to take ppart in a war against a deadly robotic invasion by creating planetary base defenses, researching and building weapons and commanding ground troops.

As well as resource management, stratogy, economics and crafting, there's a major exploration element to the game. There are hundreds of npcs waiting around the galaxies to give you missions, everything from getting rid of a troublesome band of particularly nasty pirates, to finding a load of historical artifacts to restock a museum. Given the right equipment, you can also dock with and explore derelict spacecraft and completely uninhabited planets, which involve wandering around dangerous environments in a space suit looking for valuable data and resources, using tools to dig for archeological wrellicks or open hard to find crates, or hack computers for important discoveries. Be careful however and make certain to take a gun since whether in a drifting space hulk or on an uninhabited planet, you will meet plenty of enemies ready to engage you in personal combat, as well as booby traps and misadventures. For the truly brave, you can make your way into the alien controled expanse galaxy to survey new star systems and drop of mechanical war mechs to battle a ruthless alien enemy.

Another growing part of the game involves owning your own pet creature, who will provide you with bonuses if you make sure she/he stays well fed and happy upon your travels through space.

though the player base is extremely friendly and ready to help, you might want some competition afterall, and this can be had by building and batling your own mechs. Drop off your giant robotic creations and watch as they slug it out with other players' mechs in the arena, ---- possibly earning you creddits or other bonuses in the process.

As you might gather, core exiles is an extremely diverse game, and you'll rarely become board sinse there's always the option to switch to a different activity and try something else new, and that's aside from the many festive events, competitions and new additions to the game that are made on a constant dayly wrate (keep an eye on the forum to know what's happening). All this though does come at something of a price. Though played in your web browser, the pages, ---- while streight forwardly laid out may take some navigating sinse there is often much information or many links, so find features, and keys to skip paragraphs, find buttons or navigate around tables etc are recommended to make navigating the interface easier. Sinse however the layout is very logical, any screen readers' web navigation functions should be enough to get around the game quickly, (hal, Jaws and window eyes all known to be extremely effective).

The developer has been fantastic for access, making sure that all in game objects and images are labeled, and even now includes efforts to aide Vi access in newly developed areas of the game. Thus Core Exiles is an unusually screen reader friendly game, if one it takes a little time at the start to learn.

The only part of the game which is entirely inaccessible, is the in game chat client, sinse this utilizes flash. Sinse however this is standard irc chat, this doesn't present a problem, sinse you can use any other accessible program to cconnect. This is however definitely worth doing sinse arranging deals and asking advice through chat is a major advantage in the game, it's also fun to hang out with other players too.

The game is completely free to play, though many useful extras are available through the Ce online store, such as a higher grade ship engine to provide more fuel every 15 minutes and thus give you more time playing the game. The store also often host give aways, competitions and sales to make affording these easier, indeed far more than in most games, ---- for instance, all you need to do to win free mech parts is participate in online chat.

Core exiles is absolutely the solution for anyone who's been longing for an online game not dominated by pvp. Friendly players, an endless and diverse series of in game activities, a highly detailed and well written background, not to mention thoughtful descriptions of in game items and commodities, and indeed many and frequent updates make Ce one of the best accessible games on the internet.

Additional resources.

for obvious reasons, the graphical in game galaxy map showing the jump gates between systems is not accessible. However, the Galaxy plotter found here can easily calculate the shortest route between different systems and so serve the same function as the map. It's available in game once docked with the jump gate nexus, however having it open in a second window (especially when choosing what missions to perform), is highly recommended, so the link is provided here.

As noted previously, the in game chat client is not accessible, but you can join in game chat by using another Irc program such as Web Irc, Mirander, or M irc. Just set the server to irc.core-exiles.com and the channel to #core-exiles to join. Joining with another program also won't interfere with your chance of winning a free mech pack through chat either so long as your name on Irc is the same as that on the game.

unfortunately, an update to the mech combat screen using the inaccessible ajax format has made it no longer useable by screen readers. The developer however has left the old, textual version of the combat screen up and running either for those who preferd it, or indeed for the Vi players of Ce. That combat screen can be Accessed here though using the "full output" link on the main mech view in game can get to it as well.

The Ce online forum found here is another highly useful resource. Not only can you find many useful guides and tips written there (there is a forum specifically for help and guides, and a room on that forum just for discussing Vi access), but also it's a great place to ask questions sinse Ce has a number of vi players using screen readers. All in game news and updates is posted here as well so checking frequently to see what changes may be coming to the six galaxies is a good idea.

Of particular note on the ce forum is This guide to the games' layout written by some loopy individual called Dark, intended to provide visually impared newcomers to the game an easy introduction to navigating the interface on various game screens for common activities.

Another useful fan site is The Shields down site Which has further useful information and tools, ---- noteably details of schematics and crafting.